Beverly Byrne (14 page)

He
smiled for the first time. It was the same devastatingly beautiful smile which
gleamed white against tanned skin. "We don't wear the habit outside the
priory," he explained. "Certainly not on a visit to New York."

"You're
visiting, then?" Her voice cracked, making something unusual of the
prosiac question.

"Not
exactly. I've been ill, a persistent grippe. Father Prior sent me to see a
doctor here."

"And
what did he say?" She reached for a cigarette and fumbled with the table
lighter.

"Here."
Luke ignored her question and took the lighter from her. He lit it with one
flick of his finger. "When did you start smoking?"

"A
while ago." Amy inhaled gratefully.

"Just
like all the 'clever young things,' eh? Exquisite, ravishing, chic ... those
are the operative words in your set, aren't they?"

She
flushed. "You saw that silly article."

"This
morning, in the doctor's waiting room."

"They
aren't my 'set,' as you put it. They're just people we know."

He
shrugged. "I didn't come here to talk about that anyway."

They
sat down. Amy chose a chair across from him, far enough away so perhaps he
wouldn't notice her trembling hands. When Luke had come to the wedding she had
been strengthened by the foreknowledge of his arrival. This was different.
"Are you staying long? Tommy will be sorry he missed you." She was
speaking too quickly, betraying her nervousness and hating herself for it.

"I'm
supposed to return to Dover tonight," he said. "And I told you, I
didn't come to see Tommy."

She
raised her eyes and studied his face. "Why did you come, Luke?"

"To
see you."

She
didn't know what to say. She leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. Luke
moved at the same time and took hold of her wrist. His grip was vicelike.

"I'm
supposed to make my first temporary vows next week," he said in a
struggled voice. "I can't. I keep thinking about you. No matter how much I
pray, I can't get you out of my mind."

"Maybe
you're not saying the right prayers," she said. "Try another
formula." She wanted to hurt him, and she could see that she had.

He
let her go. "You never used to be cruel."

"Perhaps
I've grown up. I used to believe that everyone was sincere and honest."

"Meaning
that I'm not."

"Meaning
whatever you want." She stood up and walked away. An ormolu French clock
on the mantel chimed the quarter hour. "I have a luncheon guest coming in
fifteen minutes. Will you join us? I'll have to send word to the kitchen."

"Oh,
for God's sake! Damn your bloody luncheon guest. Amy, don't you understand
anything I'm saying? I'm talking about my whole life, my soul, in fact."

"Your
life, your soul," she repeated softly. "What about mine, Luke? Were
you concerned about them when you allowed me to believe something that wasn't
true? Are you worried about them now?"

"I
imagine I deserve that," he said. "But you're wrong. I didn't
understand. I thought you were just a test, an infatuation. I didn't realize I
was falling in love with you."

Amy
stood very still. She felt suddenly fragile. If she moved too quickly, she
would shatter into bits.

"Were
you in love with me?" she asked in a whisper. "Are you now?"

"Yes,
God help me."

Amy
exhaled slowly. She had not realized that she'd been holding her breath.

He
rose and crossed to where she stood and put his hands on her shoulders.
"You must listen to me," he said. The blue eyes were burning stars in
his thin face. He sounded desperate, almost crazy. "There are ways to put
things right. It's complicated. The rules about church annulments are
difficult. But if you married Tommy without really wanting to, only because of
me, it might be grounds. We can't live our whole lives paying for one
mistake."

"What
about the priesthood?" she said. "Have you changed your mind about
that?"

"Yes."
He hesitated, then said very softly. "I think so. I don't know anything
more."

Amy
felt the weight of his hands on her shoulders. He wore a navy linen blazer, and
she could see the pronounced weave of the fabric. It was mesmerizing. She made
herself raise her eyes and study the clean firm lines of his jaw, and his
sensitive, mobile mouth. Then, unable to stop herself, she tilted her head and
waited for his kiss.

Luke
touched his lips to hers with infinite gentleness. They stayed thus for a few
moments, then he groaned and pulled her closer, clasping her head against his
chest and burying his face in her hair. When he spoke again he sounded more
normal, as if her kiss had restored his sanity. "Amy, oh, my dearest Amy.
How did we make such a mess of things?"

"We
just did," she whispered, her words muffled against his pounding heart.
"But what can we do about it now?"

He
groaned again. "I've thought about nothing else, but I simply don't know.
What I said before, about a church annulment, I'm only kidding us both. You'd
never get one. Maybe it doesn't matter. You can get a civil divorce. We can go
away. To Africa perhaps. We'll start a new life."

Amy
closed her eyes and let the vision take possession of her for a brief moment.
She and Luke together at Jericho the way she had dreamed it would be. Then she
drew away slightly and leaned her head back so she could look into his face.
"There's something you have to know. I'm going to have a baby."

He
let her go and stood with his arms hanging limply by his sides. She could read
his thoughts in his eyes. In the sight of God, his God at any rate, she was his
brother's wife.

"It
doesn't matter," Luke managed to say. The words were faltering and without
conviction. "It doesn't change anything."

The
last bit of hope died inside her. "It changes everything," Amy said.
"You'd never be able to forget that the child was Tommy's."

"Would
you?" he asked. His voice was hoarse with pain.

"I
don't know. But it wouldn't be the same for me. I'd feel bad about Tommy and
what I'd done to him. But I wouldn't think I was going to hell. I don't believe
in hell, or in 'forever and ever, world without end....' "

He
lifted one finger and traced the line of her cheek. "You're wrong about
that, but in other ways you're very wise for one so young."

"I've
told you before, that's what growing up in Africa does."

"Yes,"
he agreed. "You've told me before." The clock chimed noon. "I
have to go."

She
nodded and walked with him to the door of the drawing room. "Don't come
any further," he said. "I'll see myself out. I want to remember you
in this room, here like this."

***

Luke
was deep in thought when he walked down the front steps to the street. He
didn't notice the blonde girl until she said, "Oh, hello! Don't I know
you?"

He
made an effort to struggle free of his preoccupations. "I don't think
so," he said. Then he walked away.

Suzy
Randolph stared after him in puzzlement. The man was Luke Westerman, Tommy's
brother. She'd met him a few years back at a debutante party.

Later
she thought more about it, and wondered why Amy had seemed so peculiar at
lunch, and why she never mentioned her brother-in-law's visit.

10

AMY
WALKED ATLANTIC BEACH ALONE. SHE HAD forgotten her plan to do this with Tommy,
and tell him they were going to have a baby. Instead the sound of the breaking
surf provided a chorus for her agony. She kept seeing and hearing Luke. She
relived every moment of that extraordinary hour, everything he had said. It was
mad, cruel! Why did he come and tell her these things now? Why did he wait
until it was too late?

"Too
late." She spoke the words aloud. A lone gull squawked raucously in reply.
Too late for what? To marry the man she loved, rather than take his brother as
second best? Yes. But was it? Perhaps they could salvage something from the
wreck they'd made. She could get a divorce.

Luke
could tell the Dominicans that he was not going to take vows and become a
priest. Everything could be put right if they simply saw enough lawyers and
spent enough time in the courts.

She
walked as far as the coast guard station and looked at the spot where she'd
stood with Luke. She felt again the urgency of his embrace. The old memory
mingled with the more recent one. And pain was a wound reopened after she'd
thought it healed. The tide was going out and the sand was hard packed and
damp, the way it had been that December day.

Amy
studied the imprints of her bare feet and watched them disappear beneath the
lapping waves. They faded without a trace. Maybe she could make the last six
months fade away in similar fashion. The gull circled and swooped, and its cry
was laughter.

Tommy's
child was growing inside her. It would be an ever-present reminder of what had
been, whatever she and Luke did. So would his religion.

Amy
threw back her head and looked at the empty blue sky and the sun. "You up
there!" She shouted; "God, or whoever you are! You won't let him go,
will you?" Her voice died without an echo.

Tears
stung her eyes. She blinked them away, but they kept coming. It was true, and she
knew it. That's the way it was in this country. It wasn't like Africa where the
gods were part of nature, beings to be wooed so the rains would come and the
crops would grow and the women be fecund. Here God was some kind of tyrant who
demanded that people separate themselves from their humanity, their right to
love and be loved.

Whoever
he was, this God in whom Luke believed, he would never give up. If Luke left
the Dominicans for her, he would be enslaved by guilt, and trapped by her and
by Tommy's child.

Amy
knelt in the sand. She doubled over in pain and stopped fighting the tears. If
she prayed for anything, she who knew nothing of prayer, it was that this place
would cease to exist.

She
wanted to raise her head and look around and see the shining grasslands of her
childhood, with the snow-topped peak of Kilimanjaro in the distance.

It
did not appear. That dream was as impossible as the notion that she and Luke
could turn back the clock and do things differently. "Too late," she
repeated. Then she wiped her face and washed it in the cold Atlantic waters,
and headed back to the house.

Tommy
was waiting for her, worried because she'd been gone so long. She saw him
pacing anxiously in the front yard, and she knew a moment of tenderness,
overlaid with guilt. "Sorry," she said. "I walked a long way and
forgot the time."

"Doesn't
matter, as long as you're all right. I thought you might be lost."

"No
chance," she smiled. "It's just a long straight beach." She felt
awful because he was looking at her with love, and he knew nothing of what had
happened or what she had contemplated doing. All at once it seemed like a good
time to tell him about the baby. A peace offering, despite the fact that Tommy
didn't know about the war.

"Would
you like a short drive?" she suggested. "Just the two of us?"
Warren kept a Packard motor car at the house.

"No
can do," Tommy said. "I invited some people. They'll be along in
about twenty minutes. Tomorrow maybe."

"Yes,
tomorrow maybe. I'd better go and change and see if Lil wants any help with the
preparations." She went inside without saying any more.

The
next day there was no opportunity for a drive. Tommy, Lil, and Warren went to
Mass in Far Rocka-way and brought home more guests. After they left it was time
for Warren to drive them to Lawrence where they caught the train for New York.

In
her bedroom that night Amy stared at the water-color of Jericho hanging by the
dressing table. The old longings surfaced with new poignancy. There was such an
empty place inside her. Only one thing would fill it. She must go home; she
must get away from this alien city where everything conspired to cause her
pain.

She
went downstairs in the morning thinking that she was in control of her
emotions. But when she opened the
Times
it was filled with hateful,
hurtful news that reminded her of her captivity in this place.

"I
hate this damn war! I hate it!" Amy flung the newspaper and its reports of
the tank battle of the Somme across the breakfast table.

Tommy
was shocked by her intensity. She was white and trembling, and her breath came
in short, sharp gasps. "Hey, it's ok sweetheart. It's ok." He moved
quickly to her side and held her head against his chest. "It's got to end
pretty soon." He believed no such thing, but Amy need not know that.
"What do we care anyway? Let the Europeans blow each other up. We're
safe."

"Don't
you understand?" she wailed, sobs choking her words. "I want to go
home. I want to have my baby at Jericho."

"Baby!
Oh, lord!" He dropped to his knees and turned her face so he could look at
it. "Are you pregnant, sweetheart? Is that what you're telling me?"

She
nodded her head and didn't stop weeping.

"That's
great! Aren't you pleased?" He fished his handkerchief from his pocket and
wiped her eyes and made her blow her nose. "No reason our baby can't be
born right here in New York,
memsahib
," he said smiling. "We may
not be Africa, but we have doctors and hospitals here in the wilderness
too."

She
couldn't help but laugh. "I know," she said in a voice still harsh
with tears. "It's just that I want our child to be born there. I want my
nurse Naduta with me, and my own things around me."

Tommy
looked at her for a long moment. Then he stood up and poured a cup of fresh
coffee and handed it to her. "Here, drink this. You still feel like a
stranger here, don't you?"

She
nodded.

"One
other thing, what about me? Do you want me too? Or just you and the kid in the
bush?"

Amy's
brown eyes opened wide. His question made her wince with pain. How much could
Tommy know? "Of course I want you! You're my husband. You're the baby's
father."

He
looked at her. "Ok, I just wanted to get that part straight. Listen,
darling, the war will end. Maybe not as soon as we'd like, but sometime. It has
to. If nothing else, they'll run out of poor bastards to send to the
trenches." He looked grim and patted his pocket for a cigarette.

She
reached for a box of them on the sideboard and passed it to him. "Would
you consider it, Tommy?" she asked. "Would you be willing to give up
your work here, and this house and move to Africa?"

"Sure,"
he said quickly. "Why not? I think it'd be great to have lots of little
black boys running around calling me b'wana and waiting on me hand and foot.
Who wouldn't?"

"You
could manage the mines. You're so clever, Tommy, you'd learn about diamonds in
no time."

"Yeah.
Clever, that's me. That's what everyone says."

Amy
guessed that he knew she'd once offered the same arrangement to Luke, but he
didn't mention that. He smiled at her instead and said he'd take the day off.

They
spent the morning walking in Central Park and the afternoon at the flicks, just
like in the old days. When they went early to bed he made love to her. She
tried not to resist, not to allow her guilt and disappointment to show, but it
was difficult, and afterward she couldn't tell if she'd succeeded. Tommy didn't
say anything, but she sensed disapproval in the stiff way he lay beside her
when it was over.

Amy
began to scheme to find a way they could go home before the end of the war.
According to reports, there was a minimum of German resistance left in East
Africa. Only one general, Von Lettow-Vorbeck, still led a small guerrilla force
deep in the interior. If they could just find safe transport, they could go. She
wrote countless letters to her father's former attorney in Dar es Salaam. He
was an American, he must still be there. If she mailed enough letters, one of
them was bound to get through.

When
she talked of Jericho and the way things would be when they returned, Tommy
listened quietly. At the same time he grew wary of having sex with her, said it
might somehow harm the child. Instead he slept with his hand protectively
resting on her belly. They continued to give parties and go to them, but Amy
was only going through the motions. She was waiting.

One
mellow day in late September she was composing yet another letter to Africa
when her ink ran out. She went to Tommy's desk to see if there was a bottle
there. The desk top was bare and clean. Tommy was always neat, but envelopes spilled
onto the rug when she opened the drawer. It was crammed with paper, and she
shook her head over the uncharacteristic mess and bent to tidy it. That's when
she saw that most of the letters had never been opened.

They
were bills. Masses of them, and all unpaid. Amy spent fifteen minutes examining
the material, then she put on her hat and gloves and took a cab to Wall Street.

"I'm
sorry to arrive without an appointment, Uncle Donald." She had called him
that since her marriage. He'd insisted on it.

"Not
at all, my dear. I'm always happy to see you. Now, what can I do?"

She
folded her hands in her lap and tried to speak calmly. "I feel some
concern about our financial situation, Uncle Donald. I imagine that's foolish.
It's my condition perhaps." She smiled shyly and glanced up to make sure
he had understood.

"I
see! Well, that's marvelous news, Amy. I'm delighted. And certainly you
shouldn't worry at such a time. Have you discussed this with Tommy?"

She
shook her head. "I don't want him to think I don't trust him. I do,
really. It's just that we're both so young. I think we should consult you and
take your advice, and I'm afraid Tommy will be too proud to do that. "

"I
understand." He drummed a finger on his desktop. "Actually, Tommy has
been to see me a number of times. We've discussed the question of your future
often. "

"Then
there's no reason for me to worry?" she asked.

"Now,
Amy." He looked uncomfortable. "I'm not saying everything is exactly
as it should be. There are one or two things ..."

"What
things?"

"Tommy
has borrowed rather heavily against your estate. I am a little concerned about
that. We mustn't jeopardize your being able to take control once this war ends.
Don't want the bank to end up owning the mines now, do we?"

Amy
wanted to scream. She only said, "How real is the danger, Uncle
Donald?"

"Oh,
not at all real yet! It's just the pattern that concerns me. Perhaps you should
suggest that the two of you live a little more frugally for the time being. You
ladies are good at that sort of thing, I'm told."

"Yes,
I'll do that. Thank you."

The
scene was terrible. They said things neither of them would ever forget.
"You're a cheat and a liar and a fraud!" Amy screamed after they'd
been arguing for almost an hour. "You're not the man I thought you were at
all."

"Not
Luke, you mean." Tommy shook with rage and clung to a small mahogany
table, as if to keep himself from striking her. "Not the saintly golden
boy. That's what's bothering you, isn't it? You're just sick with wanting it to
be Luke's baby inside you!"